


Only Sky Above Us

by FireBurnsBrighter



Category: Original Work
Genre: Battle of Dunkirk, F/M, Gen, History, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 16:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireBurnsBrighter/pseuds/FireBurnsBrighter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The cacophony of gunfire never ceases, seems endless. His ears ring and everywhere he looks there is rubble, bullets and gore. It's a free-for-all; a game ten percent skill and ninety percent luck mixed with a primal need to survive.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Sky Above Us

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: this was written as a creative essay for school, and the theme was the battle of dunkirk. background information might help with reading this, but it's not required really.

Gregory Watson stands, bag in hand, waving at his family of three as he waits to board the ship that will take him to war. Dozens of other men around him do the same, some holding back tears, some letting them fall freely.

The line begins to move and a horn blows loudly from the dock. He walks onto the boat slowly, waving until his arm aches and his family are pinpricks of colour in the distance.

* * *

The journey is long and uncomfortable- packs of broad-shouldered men all cramped into the same space.

Gregory tries to move to a less busy spot, and takes out the four tattered photographs that he has of his family.

The first is of his parents. His mother sits on a chair, smile lines by her eyes deep as she beams at the camera. His father stands behind her with his hand on her shoulder with a matching smile behind his greying beard.

The second is of his siblings when they were children, all five of them with his on the end beside Wilfred, two years his senior and a soldier like himself.

Wilfred left for a battle months ago, leaving behind his wife and newly born baby.

He never returned.

Gregory had left his own family with words of assurance and promises to keep himself safe, and he could only hope that they were true.

The final two photos are of his wife and children. In one, his wife Annabeth sits in the garden, flower in hand, caught in mid-laugh.

In the last, his two children Alice and Thomas play together with wooden blocks and an old doll. The look happy, content, and more than anything he wants to be able to see them grow up, to live, to continue to be as they are in the picture.

* * *

It's astonishing, how war can change a man.

He'd seen it before, in retired soldiers and those sent home due to injuries.

He'd seen the haunted look in their eyes, the dark circles from the sleepless nights due to the nightmares that surely invade their resting hours.

The sallow skin, the hollowed cheeks that replace what was once a healthy glow and a smile full of mirth.

He could imagine what they'd been through, he could listen to their tales of war and blood and destruction, but nothing could prepare him for this.

He's seen more death in two weeks than he has hairs on his head, surely.

The cacophony of gunfire never ceases, seems endless. His ears ring and everywhere he looks there is rubble, bullets and gore.

It's a free-for-all; a game ten percent skill and ninety percent luck mixed with a primal need to survive.

Shoot or be shot. Kill or be killed –or at least this is what it feels like.

Do not stop to help the man who has fallen.

Live or die, and take as many as you can with you.

* * *

Three more men fall from beside him in eighty two minutes, and he cannot save them.

He must run, run as fast as he can. He can feel the adrenaline running through his veins as though water through a straw. It is the only thing keeping him upright, his heart beating in time with the rapid firing of his gun.

He dodges from building to building, taking cover wherever he can.

Dodge, fire, run, repeat.

Soon, though, it is not enough. His energy dims and he can't get behind the remains of the next wall fast enough.

At first, he doesn't feel anything, but then he becomes aware of the bullet ripping through his leg, more like fire than metal.

He drops his gun immediately, grasping his thigh.

His hands clasp the bleeding flesh, trying to staunch the flow, but there's too much, there's too much…

* * *

The town he grew up in was small.

There were maybe thirty or forty houses, one school, five shops, a church, and then acres of looping fields in every direction.

Gregory's family lived three doors down from the Coopers.

The Coopers had one daughter, named Annabeth, and Gregory thought she was the most beautiful girl in the whole village from the first time he saw her.

The Cooper family took over the local Blacksmiths when the old man who had owned it prior died with no family to leave it to.

Gregory was ten then, and he vividly remembers his parents making all of his brothers and sisters and even his father put on their Sunday bests to go over and greet them with a freshly baked cherry pie.

Mr Cooper had opened the door, a tall, broad man with calluses on his hands and a kind smile on his face.

Gregory had seen a small girl, about his age, pop out from behind Mr Cooper timidly.

She had shiny black shoes and a red ribbon tied in her dark blonde hair.

Ten years later, they were married, and every year on their anniversary he bought her another red ribbon just to see the smile that adorned her face as she remembered.

* * *

Gregory falls in and out of consciousness, black spots dancing in his eyes each time and a dull, persistent throbbing in his leg.

He knows that he is lucky to be alive, so he doesn't complain each time a sharp pain bursts through him.

The seventh of twelfth or maybe the fourteenth time he drifts awake, he recognises the scent of salt in the air and hears the crashing of waves against the shore.

Two men pull him onto a boat beside hundreds of other ragged, frightened looking people.

He hears someone say something about 'rescue' and 'home', but he is too worn out to listen to the whole conversation.

Eventually, he falls back into oblivion, comforted by the vague knowledge that he is  _safe_ , and thinking that he managed to keep his promise and that it's  _over. At last._

* * *

The bustle of people around him and the flurry of conversation wake him.

He finds himself being pushed with the flow of people to the exit of the boat.

When he gets outside, he has to blink a few times to get his eyes used to the sudden light, and a few times more when he realises where he is.

The crowd around him are still moving, so he limps forward and anxiously glances around to find his family, and finally spots then at the edge of the pier.

He moves towards them as quickly as his mangled leg will allow, and they run towards him as soon as recognition sets in.

They gather around him, wary of his leg, clinging to any other place they can find.

Tears are streaming down their faces, and his wife kisses him through the damp, whispering assurances and promises and nonsensical things that neither of them really hear.

He is home, he's home, he's _home._

* * *

Time passes, and he never forgets. He is one of the men he used to see whose hearts always seemed so heavy, and now he knows why.

The nightmares are bad, but when he wakes up in a cold sweat, his wife holds him and comforts him, and he's okay- as okay as he can be.

His children grow up, as children do, and they get married, have children of their own.

When Gregory's hair is grey and his wrinkles deep, he passes on the Blacksmiths to his son as his wife's father did to him.

It's all okay, and he's home, and he  _lived._


End file.
